Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is bringing a change to the franchise's template that could be to the benefit of its "found footage" horror movie format. The seventh installment in the Paranormal Activity series, Next of Kin is set to arrive on Paramount+ on October 29th, just in time for Halloween. The timing is certainly fitting for a horror series that spent several years on the Halloween throne, but it's also going to change things up for the franchise in more ways than one.
Next of Kin is being positioned as a reboot of sorts, focusing on a young woman filming a documentary in an Amish community. Unless the trailers are hiding some big surprises in the film (which is certainly possible), it doesn't look like major characters from the series will appear in Next of Kin, which basically takes the series into a broader scope of supernatural hauntings. Moreover, while the evil demonic entity, Toby, may or may not appear, the film is still continuing with the found footage style of the Paranormal Activity series -- though the horror film seems to be changing it up in one big way.
The Paranormal Activity movies were typically filmed in residential areas on cameras that were largely planted in one spot. Even as they ventured out into the surrounding world as Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones did, the footage was still mostly caught on handheld cameras and cell phones. However, Next of Kin is taking that even further by transitioning the series into a documentary format.
Recovered documentary reels is how the found footage genre began, as the huge viral impact of The Blair Witch Project brought the horror subgenre to the mainstream, followed by other found footage movies like The Last Exorcism. Paranormal Activity was naturally wise to adopt its own style of capturing the demonic hauntings in character's homes, but the gimmick had clearly worn thin by the time Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension temporarily concluded the series in 2015. For Next of Kin to be a series revival, it needs to change things up to bring back the fresh impact the first Paranormal Activity had.
Paranormal Activity really struck gold in its micro-budget home movie style of otherworldly hauntings, and the series has also been one of the best at innovating itself, using security camera footage in Paranormal Activity 2 and a slowly rotating camera in Paranormal Activity 3. Still, the series kept things in-doors to a large extent, and even when venturing elsewhere, adhered to an approach that was intentionally both amateur and domestic. Found footage horror movies have evolved quite a bit as the subgenre became all the rage throughout the 2000s and early '10s. However Next of Kin seems be more than just the next movie in the series after an extended break. Rather, it seems to be changing its approach up with a more Blair Witch-esque style of cinematography and bringing it to a more country setting in an Amish community. No other Paranormal Activity has gone that route before, and with Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, the series has a great chance to stretch its legs and show what kind of scares it can offer outside of its (and audiences') comfort zone.
